Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

anything at all.) The five spots there also held concentrations of niobium and chromium—where five large supplies of hullmetal had been chemically separated, then scattered.

She decided to be especially careful. The plague clearly did something to your brain.

* * *

In forty days of inactivity, morale aboard the Fury had plummeted. The crew slept a lot off duty. Some began grooming compulsively. Dueling had fallen off, and Power Officer had reported hearing one of his crewkzin apologize to another of equal rank. Gnyr-Captain didn't even have the comfort of nagging Manexpert, for he knew intuition was a hairless thing, curling up under pressure.

Gnyr-Captain was exercising in his cabin, leaping across it with the gravity turned low. He didn't need that much exercise, but it ate time—and he'd caught himself wondering if his tail would look good tattooed. . . . Someone buzzed, and he poised, turned the gravity back up, and grabbed a variable-sword in one combined movement. Could have been smoother, he noted. Getting soft. "Enter," he said.

Manexpert opened the door. "If I entered you might get ill, sir," he said. It was a good bet; he wasn't clean. He was matted, too, and missing chin hairs where he'd been tugging on them. One of his ears was half-curled, and had a persistent twitch; and he—

"What are you doing?" Gnyr-Captain exclaimed.

"Sir? Oh, the tail. I thought fiddling with the end of it would help me think more like a human, sir."

"Humans don't have tails," said Gnyr-Captain distractedly, disturbed at the sight.

"I know, sir, but if they did they'd fiddle with the tuft."

"Why?"

"They fiddle with everything, sir. —I have five possible destinations, Gnyr-Captain."

This was simultaneously annoying and a relief; he'd expected thirty-two or forty. "Name them."

"From most to least dangerous: first, he could return to his own system."

"Suicide."

"Just being thorough, sir. Next, the asteroid belt of Gunpoint."

"How is that dangerous?"

"As the system nearest Sol it's ruled from Earth. There are rebels in the asteroids who want to overthrow the governors, and they'd want the ship, but they might save money by killing him and taking it."

That sounded remarkably sensible. "Humans would do that? They're usually so scrupulous in matters of trade."

"Not with each other, sir. In fact, the humans most concerned with dealing honorably with other species often treat their fellow humans like sthondats."

"Why?"

"I've never even heard a theory, sir. It's one of those human things."

"Ftah. Proceed."

"Third is Fuzz. Fourth is Warhead. I judge them nearly equal in danger. I don't know whether human telepaths go insane on Fuzz; on the other hand, though Warhead is closer to Kzin, it presents logistical difficulties for invasion—"

"I know about Warhead," Gnyr-Captain said sharply. He had had ancestors there—might still have, in stasis. "Fifth?"

"Home," Manexpert said in human speech.

"Never heard of it."

"A colony destroyed by an unidentified disease, which was still active during later visits. We may assume the prey has a pressure suit, and colony relics would include repair materials—"

"He's there," Gnyr-Captain said with certainty.

"It is least likely, sir—I see, playing a double game?"

Gnyr-Captain's ears cupped.

"Human phrase, sir. Their strategies often—"

"Manexpert," Gnyr-Captain interrupted, surprising himself with his mildness, "go groom, and get some rest, and rinse yourself with that polymer solvent or whatever it is you like so much. But first tell Navigator where to find Huwwng—that world."

"Home, sir?" Manexpert enunciated.

"Yes. I don't know how you can reproduce that monkey howling. Dismissed."

"Yes, sir. You get used to the taste after a few years, sir," Manexpert said, and saluted, and closed the door.

Gnyr-Captain squinted at the closed door for a full minute, trying to make sense of that.

III

Within a week of landing, Peace was sick. Not with the plague; with rage. She'd done the first repairs with parts in storage, then done a full rundown on ship's systems to see about cannibalizing anything redundant.

The autodoc had a telomerizing subsystem—it could restore one cell's chromosomes to a youthful condition. It also had the capacity for full brain transplant. Which had been used. Repeatedly.

She should have realized. Boosterspice will not restore fertility; Peace had "never met" her father because she never had one. She'd been gestated as a supply of spare parts. Her thyroid had been kept low to make her easy to catch. And what a funny pun her name was!

Jan had been sentenced to twelve years, and had been due out . . . about now, in fact. Peace was nearing the end of her fertility; Jan would have had to hurry to get her brain put into the spare in time to bear a replacement. The spare brain would be thrown away, of course, and Jan Corben would be reported as suffering a sad accident.

It came to Peace suddenly that the kzinti invasion had saved her life.

When she finally got her hysterical laughter under control, she was very calm.

She thought.

She called up the manual-operations checklist on the computer, started a test run, and while it was fully occupied did a physical disconnect between the overseer system and the airlock, the gravity planer, the fusion tube, and the autodoc. She resisted temptation: she used a cutting laser. An axe would have been less accurate.

This done, she used a handheld computer to check the autodoc programs, and found that they were indeed not what the ship's computer had said they were. She found the programs used on Jan, copied them to crystal storage, and simply replaced the old crystals with the new ones. She traced circuit paths, found other storage media with programs inside, and destroyed them. Then she used the autodoc.

When she awoke, the first thing she realized was that the kzinti would come looking for her.

Repairs would have to wait. She needed weaponry. The computer would know everything that could be made from materials on hand; it could make a list while the autodoc made up a pressure suit. She'd have to get the parts fabricators outside.

* * *

It happened this way:

She was out rigging a sluice for the refiner's waste dust—it ate the local soil, but needed a lot of it—when she